Manitoba Baywatch?

Every year thousands of vacationers visit the beach, yet thankfully accidental drowning are rare.
I ran a medical clinic at Grand Beach for several years and our team actually witnessed one case of drowning as well as one near drowning.
The Beach Safety program at Grand Beach and other provincial areas is a service intended to educate the public and promote water safety. The Beach safety program is not defined as a lifeguard service.

With days of 30,000 plus visitors it can never do this. The park officials took great efforts to insist that “this isn’t Baywatch” although I don t believe anyone every really accepted that.

Recent signs posted clearly state: “swimming is unsupervised”; “you are responsible, watch your children, know your own limits, drowning is preventable, inflatables are dangerous in windy conditions”; and “observe flag warnings”. These are the main objectives of the Beach Safety program which the safety patrol does well.
We were fortunate to recover one young girl that had been immersed only briefly. Her friends had seen her go down and alerted bystanders who quickly found her underwater. Beach safety initiated prompt CPR and we administered oxygen promptly at my clinic. The ambulance was available and she miraculously recovered by the time we reached the hospital.

I would stress that is was luck for this girl, that everyone was present at the proper time and able to perform their role making this a team effort. Our other case was not resuscitated.

Missing children is a very common situation at the beach and Beach safety is constantly asked by parents to find their toddlers. On a crowded weekend parents can lose sight of kids after only 15 feet as the beach is so crowded.
Most children are very quickly located but this remains a strain on beach safety as they fully understand the seriousness of drowning.,
I encourage parents of very young children to visit less busy beaches.
Studies have shown that children living near large bodies of water have less drowning as they learn to swim earlier. All city pools have swimming programs for children and adults that also teach the basics of rescue as well.

Our experiences at the beach were that when we worked together with well informed people emergencies were easier to manage. Activating the proper Emergency Response System is what helped our young girl.